You can now use your Android device to collaborate with ... - Tecnoblog (Blog)

Remember the Folding @ home initiative that uses the idle processing power of your PC to investigations related illnesses? For know that now you can contribute to similar projects, but using your smartphone or tablet Android.

We’re talking about an application developed by researchers at UC Berkeley for BOINC. The name sounds funny for Brazilians, but it is the acronym for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, an open design of distributed computing that collaborates with research on AIDS, global warming, climate changes, etc.. More than 50 projects currently.

numbering (7.2.x) gives to understand that there are times that the mobile version of BOINC exists, but the application was only available yesterday on Google Play (had others, but not official). You can run it on almost any device with Android 2.3 or higher.

Their mode of operation is not very different from the PC versions: the program monitors the machine and to detect idle, started to process tasks related to projects supported. The interesting thing is that the user can set the application’s own interface with which initiatives work (requires a quick registration before).

BOINC for Android

As the idea is to utilize the idle capacity of the unit and not burst quota plans 3G or 4G, the app is configured by default to only work when the device is connected to Wi-Fi, although the user can disable this option .

Likewise, the tool also checks the battery level. If the remaining charge reaches 90% or less, the processing tasks of the application are not executed. If you prefer another limit, you can set it up in the configuration options of the program, as simple as that.

In the advanced options can further define how to use the CPU cores, how much internal space for storing data of tasks, the maximum temperature that the battery may arrive before processing is stopped and so on.

Very interesting, no? According to the team in charge, the next step is to make a version of the application is available for iOS sooner. And if you do not want or can not use your smartphone or tablet to collaborate with BOINC, but still want to collaborate with the initiative, you can do it from their software for Windows, Mac and Linux